Before going out to enjoy the day, I felt compelled by all the comments of yesterday to re-enter the fray after my original post which seemed to be taken as an assault upon the individual who posted the forum question.

I suggest everyone go back to that original question and consider it for a minute. This is not just cursory inquisitiveness about numbers. Sure, many airlines tell you generally how many members they have, but 38 million is not a real number. 37,586,900 is a real number insofar as the number of AAdvantage members there are. (If indeed that does appear on AA's website, then why did several days of exhaustive web searching not uncover it? A visit to each program site might just reveal similar PR numbers, which our questioner should have been able to uncover in a few hours. Obviously, he didn't find what others seem to be able to uncover.)

How many of these members actually travel more than once a year to see grandma? We have often raised the question of how many elites various programs have, and nobody has yet come up with any real numbers, as was demonstrated in a follow-up post here.

And this is the very tip of the iceberg question that was raised. There are at least 25 major carriers offering FF programs and to answer the question for each would provide one hell of a piece of marketing intelligence. (Add to that the half-dozen major hotel programs...) The further response as to why this information was wanted does not convince me of the motives behind the original question. Yes, we might have each been able to contribute in the spirit of the board what we knew about our respective programs, as did Glen. But he certainly did not answer your whole question, maybe 20% of it.

And no matter what Randy was able to tell you, the actual numbers are proprietary to each airline/hotel and to each program. You would never get frequency of travel numbers that mean anything from any single carrier. Your question did not suggest to me a cursory interest. If that was the case, it would have been:

"Can anybody tell me how many members the major programs have? And how many of these are elites? And what is the cost-per-mile/point earned? What is the redemption value per mile/point?"

But the list you provide goes beyond such casual interest. (Maybe you are an economist with nothing better to do with your life than sit around and create econometric models of micro-industrial marketing incentives, but give us a break.)

If indeed you want -- for whatever reason -- to do a modelling of the elasticity of demand created by incentives such as FF programs, then work from IATA figures of air travel/passengers/passenger miles and posit 1% = move than one flight per month, 10% = more than one flight per year. But why? Unless you had some othermotive for assembling the data.

I am sorry if I did not welcome you onto the site. Others had, so I saw no need.

Why my cyncism toward this post and poster? In a past career as a marketing consultant, I received many Requests for Proposals to undertake projects which contained far less specific criteria and assessment parameters than the ones posted at the top of this forum. Given this experience, I could only surmise you were motivated by more than just curiosity. Or you have a very exhaustive mind that thinks in organizational systems-think.

Your answer still has not convinced me of the innocence of your original request, and if anything has furthered my view that we are doing your work for which you may well be financially or otherwise rewarded quite handsomely.

If you want to know how to personally maximize the FF program benefits from your travels, fine, I am quite prepared, like most others on this board, to give you tips and hints. That's what these forums are all about. Perhaps as a newcomer you had not spent enough time checking out these forums to glean that appreciation of the fine differences between an open community sharing, and one member exploiting the knowledge and work of others to their personal benefit and profit.

However, in keeping with the sharing aspect of our community, I have spent 10-minutes going through Air Canada annual reports to come up with a number of 4 million members of Aeroplan (1998 AR, nothing in the last 1999 AR on this subject). Assuming CanadianPlus had a similar number, and one-half are members of both, it is likely Aeroplan has 6 million members going into the 2001 combined membership year (after merging with CanadianPlus). No other information about dedemptions, etc. are available.

I will take leave from this forum now, having said my piece and on this subject to neve post further comment.



[This message has been edited by Shareholder (edited 09-02-2000).]